Your Best Foods To Eat After Working Out | Post Workout Nutrition 101

There’s a short window of opportunity that opens up immediately following a workout. In this short time frame you’re able to drastically increase your recovery and rebuilding rate from the intense workout you just finished.

While a lot of people have no idea that they should even eat anything after working out, everybody else doesn’t quite seem to know exactly what they should be eating to get the most benefits from their workout.

I tell my clients that they’ve just made a huge investment with their time and energy into a world class workout and they should be maximizing their profits by having some great post workout nutrition. Nutrition is easily the most difficult part of getting results and to be frank with you the training is actually the simplest part.

Out training a bad diet is like trying to out race a car without any fuel in the engine. It’s just not going to happen. This is why we have to take the time to carefully plan out what we’re going to be eating after working out so we get the best results possible. If you’re really trying to benefit from your workouts then try taking some protein shake or powder post-workout, then see my Prograde review.

Knowing exactly what to eat after working out will undoubtedly maximize your hard earned efforts in the gym while also giving you the biggest returns on your workouts.

I'm not on steroids, it's a protein shake!

Everybody essentially knows that working out is going to be good for them, but a lot of people also don’t know that it puts a ton of stress on the body. Usually the stress isn’t too big of a deal and if you’ve ever been sore the next day following a workout, had trouble sleeping, or felt hungrier then you know what I’m talking about.

When those 3 things happen it’s basically our bodies telling us that our workouts have annihilated all of our muscles resources, broken down our muscle fibers and now our muscles need to have nutrients to rebuild and recover. And although this all sound kind of bad, it’s actually a good thing in the long run, as long as we keep on doing the proper recovery stuff such as eating the right foods and getting enough rest.

Following a workout the best foods that you can eat are going to be high in protein and high in carbohydrates. You should also do everything to avoid eating fats following a workout because fats will take away the effectiveness of your post workout meal. This is because fat slows the digestion process and this will affect how fast you can absorb your protein and carbohydrates.

You also want to take every measure possible to make sure that you take in your protein + carbohydrate meal IMMEDIATELY after finishing a workout. After you finish your awesome workout your muscles are depleted and they’re crying for some protein.

Research has found that those how take in their meals right after working out had significantly better results than those who ate it 1 hour after their workouts. This just goes to show you that your protein and glycogen rebuilding will be screwed if you end up waiting too long. So stop chit chatting with your buddy after you work out and get something in your bodies!

There’s also boatloads of controversy when it comes to whether or not you should be eating whole foods or a protein shake after you finish working out. Most hardcore dieticians will advocate taking in only whole foods instead of opting for the protein shake.

While this isn’t a bad idea I don’t think it’s the best option for a number of reasons. One reason is that liquid protein shakes are going to be much easier to digest and absorb following a workout while eating whole foods will take a while to breakdown.

The second reason is most people don’t want to eat a big meal of real food right after a workout. Maybe this is because their desire for whole foods went down the drain because their workout was so intense. But for whatever reason, protein shakes win it here too.

And the third reason is because it’s much more convenient to down a protein shake then it is to go home and prepare a big meal. The longer you wait to get those much need nutrients in your body the most likely you’re going to miss your window of opportunity.

My personal favorite protein shake to take in is Prograde Workout. It has the proper carbohydrate and protein levels that research has proven to be the best for rebuilding the body post workout. And it also tastes good too!

If you’re curious to see how much protein and carbohydrates you should be taking in post workout then I’ve also made for you a calculator that will automatically find out how much you should be taking in.

Use the calculator and figure out how much protein and carbohydrates you should be taking in to make sure that you’re maximizing on your investment. Keep training and eating right!

Your coach,

Josh

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This can totally make or break your workouts:

The sad truth about it is that the vast majority of people are royally screwing up their post workout nutrition and it’s devastating their results…make sure you’re not one of them. Click Here to Download the Free Report

Michele

May 24, 2011 at 2:47 pm

Hey Josh, I had a question regarding the protein carb calculator. I read somewhere (possibly on your website or another fitness site I’ve come across) that you shouldn’t even have more than a certain number of grams of protein (depending on your gender) in one intake because you’ll just end up ‘relieving’ yourself of it anyway because our bodies can’t absorb that much protein. I think it was around 10 grams for women and 15 for men, but I’m not exactly sure on the numbers.

Josh Schlottman

May 25, 2011 at 1:22 pm

Hi Michele,

You’re body can absorb more protein than you think. There is a popular myth out there that you can’t absorb more than 30 grams of protein per meal but there isn’t any science out there to back up that statement. In fact, researchers in France have found that eating protein all at once can be just as well absorbed as spreading it out over your day.